Pages Tagged “Opera”
Reviews
- Opera (Web Browser) ★★★☆☆ Opera used to be one of my favorite browsers back in the day, but its current incarnation just doesn’t appeal to me. I much prefer Vivaldi, which is a spiritual successor to the original.
Tech Tips
- On Broken HTML From time to time the idea is put forth that less common browsers need to start dealing with bad code. There are two problems with that view.
- Simple Browser Categorization (Obsolete) Sometimes you want to know exactly what software people (or bots) are using to view your website. Sometimes all you want to know is which rendering engine’s quirks you need to cater to.
- User-Agent Spoofing Explained Let’s say someone decides that they’ll only allow blondes into an event. Depending on how its done, UA spoofing can be like wearing a blonde wig, or it can be like a brunette wearing a badge that says “Blonde.”
- Web Design is Like Pizza A lot of pages aren’t as specific as the authors think they are. When you write code and test it on only one browser, you’re not testing that the code is correct, you’re testing that that browser makes the same assumptions you do.
Blog Posts
- Split Opera, Hold the Viking Helmets
The reporting is a bit confusing, but it looks like the Opera web browser has been sold to a Chinese consortium. The group wanted to buy the Norwegian company outright, but the bid failed, and they fell back to an alternate deal. According to NewsWeb: The following business units of Opera will be included in […]
- Losing Opera to WebKit
Why I’m disappointed in Opera’s switch to WebKit, even though I’m a fan of open-source and Free-with-a-capital-F software.
- End of Opera Unite & Opera Widgets
Over the years, Opera has introduced many features that became standard across web browsers, but some just haven’t caught on. Opera Unite and widgets are being removed.
- Webkit display:table-cell Problem
Bug: I wanted to retrofit an old table layout with CSS to help out iPhone & Android users, but WebKit only applies block style to some table elements.
- What’s Cool in Opera 10
Opera 10 adds speed, webfonts, improved email, better compatibility, better spell-check, and did I mention speed?
- Browser Sniffing Strikes Again!
Opera 10 will pretend to be Opera 9.80 in order to work around websites that only see the first digit of the version number.
- 15 years of the Opera Web Browser
Looking back on 15 years of the Opera web browser, and the 10 years that I’ve used it.
- Opera Mini on Android
Now there’s timing: Just two days after I bought a G1, Opera has released a beta of Opera Mini for the Android platform. You can find it in the Communications section of the Android Marketplace. Amazingly enough, on its first day out, it’s already #2 by popularity. For the most part I’m happy with the […]
- Flash Sighting? Opera: The Fastest Browser Alive!
Opera Software has just released a new beta version of the desktop web browser, Opera 9.50 beta 2. The splash page makes me think of something a bit different, though: Opera 9.5 beta Speed, security, and performance matter. Now, we’ve made the fastest browser in the world even faster. Opera’s new beta is quicker to […]
- Techno-weird Links
Lisa the Barbarian: A woman poses with a viking helmet and a sword…and an Opera Browser T-shirt. (via Espenao’s Opera the Barbarian) CNET UK presents The 30 dumbest videogame titles ever, including “Spanky’s Quest,” “Ninjabread Man,” “How to Be a Complete Bastard,” “Touch Dic” and “Attack of the Mutant Camels.” (via Slashdot). Cowboy Bebop at […]
- Behind the Times
While wandering the aisles at Micro Center, I stumbled on ancient versions of Netscape and Opera for sale…even though newer versions had been free for years!
- Legality Links
Organization for Transformative Works – dedicated to protecting the expression of fan fiction, fan art, etc. (via Naomi Novik) Open Standards, One Web, and Opera – Just why are standards important, anyway? (via Opera Watch) Speaking of Opera, their EU antitrust complaint against Microsoft has been making waves. Responses at CSS3.info, Web Standards Project, Slashdot […]
- Safari on Windows: What effect will it have on Opera?
Following up on my previous post, Apple just dropped a bombshell: the Safari web browser is now available for Windows. I’ve posted some general reactions at K-Squared Ramblings as to how it will benefit web developers and users overall. The most obvious is that Windows-only web designers will no longer have an excuse for not […]
- Opera Really Satisfies
The Opera Web Browser is in the news today. First, they’ve just released version 9.20. In addition to the usual security, stability, and compatibility fixes, they’re promoting a new feature called Speed Dial, to make it easier to reach your most-frequently-visited websites. Meanwhile, a recent survey by NetApplications and Surveyware found that while Firefox is […]
- Firefox too mainstream for Alternative Browser Alliance
I’ve been thinking about this for a while, but it’s time to refocus the Alternative Browser Alliance. Mozilla’s Asa Dotzler has referred to Firefox and Internet Explorer as the “mainstream browsers” for more than a year now, and it looks like that’s become true. The web is no longer an IE monopoly. It’s become an […]
- Opera hits MySpace
Following the trend of musicians setting up shop on MySpace, the social networking site now hosts a profile for the Opera Web browser. (Just kidding about the musicians part.) On a related note, I’ve found that on the rare occasions I’ve looked at MySpace pages, Opera tends to be more responsive than Firefox, which tends […]
- Firefox and Opera: Allies?
Opera Watch posted an interview with Firefox co-founder Blake Ross yesterday, in which he talks about Firefox, Opera, and the relationship between the two. When asked about the rivalry between fans of the browsers, he says, “I think it’s ridiculous. Millions of people out there rely on us to make the Web better, not have […]
- Know Your Enemy (Web Browser Rivalries)
There’s a lot of misinformation out there about various web browsers. Opera can/can’t do this. Firefox can/can’t do that. There’s only so much you can do to promote one product when you only know rumors or outdated facts about another. Opera users: If someone told you that Firefox was better than Opera because it doesn’t […]
- Widget Mania
The Opera web browser has introduced a Dashboard-like Widget feature in Opera 9 Preview 2. I believe this is the first 3+ platform widget framework out there. Dashboard is, of course, Mac OS X only. Yahoo! Widgets (formerly Konfabulator) is Windows XP and Mac OS X only. The KDE Desktop (mostly used on Linux and […]
- Conditional Opera Banners Using JavaScript
Posting an Opera button on your website or blog is a great way to encourage people to try out the browser — but what if the visitor already uses Opera? It shows solidarity, but what if you could show them something else, something that is new to them? You might want to replace your regular […]
- Happy Birthday Opera
Opera Software celebrates its 10th anniversary today with an online party and free registration codes for a day. I first discovered the Opera web browser in college, probably 1998 or back in 1999. A friend who worked with me at the Artslab showed it to me, and I was impressed by how fast it was […]
- Browser War, OS War
It occurred to me today that if you lay out the three major players in computer operating systems and the three major players in web browsers, the results track remarkably well. Windows and Internet Explorer. The dominant player. Obtained that position by being good enough, cheap enough, and promoted enough to win a protracted two-way […]
- Take Action: Browser Choice for an Open Web
Domination by a single web browser harms the web, whether it’s Internet Explorer or Chrome.
- Why Alternative Browsers?
When Internet Explorer won the first Browser War, the web stagnated. Lack of competition led to a lack of technical innovation, and with 95% of people using the same software (with the same vulnerabilities), the web became a breeding ground for viruses and other malware.
- The Alternative Browser Alliance
I’m launching a new browser switch site, with a bit of a twist. It’s promoting all alternative browsers, kind of like Browse Happy, but a bit more inclusive and aimed at a slightly different audience. The idea is that a diverse browser “market”—one with three or four major browser suppliers all competing with each other—is […]
- Tabs ≠ MDI
The ridiculous Firefox/Opera rivalry (it’s software, not religion) has given rise to one annoyingly persistent meme: the belief that tabs are just MDI (Multiple Document Interface). They’re not. MDI, as implemented in many Windows applications and eventually abandoned by Microsoft, involves having a mini-desktop inside your application, with its own windows that you can minimize, […]
- Fixing broken sites in the browser
The new Opera 8.0.1 includes an experimental feature called Browser JavaScript. It’s a collection of client-side scripts that automatically corrects known errors on websites as they’re displayed. Opera downloads updated scripts once a week. It’s an extension of the User JavaScript concept. Firefox’s Greasemonkey is basically the same thing, and it’s gotten a lot of […]
- Elephants in the Web 1: Opera
There’s a saying about the elephant in the room that no one will talk about. Everyone knows it’s there, but by some unspoken rule no one will mention it. I’ve noticed that when web browsers are compared, there’s one thing Opera supporters tend to ignore or downplay: Opera’s business model. Internet Explorer and Safari are […]
- Opera CEO All Wet
Sorry for the misleading title, it’s sort of an homage to CNET’s recent coverage of Firefox.* Opera CEO Jon von Tetzchner, excited by the response to Opera 8.0, promised to swim from Norway to the US if Opera 8.0 managed 1 million downloads in 4 days. (By comparison, Firefox 1.0 managed 1 million in less […]
- Perspective on the browser wars
At the end of a post on SSL/TLS and just how much security a “secure” site really gives you, Eric Lawrence of IEBlog posted an interesting thought: The so-called “browser wars” have fundamentally changed. It’s no longer Microsoft vs. Mozilla vs. Opera et all. Now it’s the “good guys” vs. the “bad guys.” The “bad […]
- Opera 8 (The OTHER “other browser”)
Opera 8 is out, and their website is swamped so badly they replaced their home page with a stripped-down version pointing to download sites. That’s a first. Unfortunately I can’t get the Linux download link to get me anywhere except back to the splash page, so I’ve only managed to grab the Windows version so […]
- Web Browser Renaissance
The new beta of OmniWeb uses Apple’s WebCore, the Konqueror-based code used to display pages in Safari. What makes this so interesting is that OmniWeb was the first web browser designed to really work with OS X. IIRC MS really didn’t do much to IE except add the compatibility code and change the icons. A […]